[x]

Héctor Abad Faciolince: “Books are like knives. They can either be used to peel oranges or they can be used to kill people”

Interview: Laura Rodríguez

Translation: Martyn Manson

The Columbian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince (Medellín, 1958) waited twenty years before he was able to write his father’s story. This was not due to the rampant, mindless violence gripping his country, which had taken away the most important person in his life, but rather the fact that he needed time for the memories of what had happened to settle and sink in, enabling him to tell his story without the distortions or sentimentality which intense emotions often produce.

El olvido que seremos, the book that he published in 2006, and which we have selected for the reading group, was the outcome of that twenty year wait. Through his memoirs, the author paints a portrait of a father who loved him passionately and who fought relentlessly for a better world, never allowing himself to be influenced by those who favoured privilege over justice. However, the author avoids dwelling too much on the pain of his loss and does not try to mythify his murdered father. No family is perfect and his family, like all families, also had their contradictions. As part of a nation, which transcends its individual members, his family’s story also reflects the customs and recent history of Columbia.

According to Héctor Abad, El olvido que seremos fulfils a personal need to keep his father’s memory alive. Since its publication, the book has been a resounding success, praised by writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa, who considers it to be a masterpiece. This autumn the book will appear in English for the first time, translated by Anna McLean and published by Old Street Publishing and it is likely that Héctor Abad Faciolince will come to London for the release of the book in October. However, in the mean time, he has provided us with a few insights into a book which is difficult to classify in the conventional sense.

You say that you needed to wait twenty years before being able to write El olvido que seremos. How did it affect you looking so closely at your father’s story and your relationship with him?

I would have liked to have waited even longer but I was almost fifty years old and when you get to fifty you know that you are already well over half way through life’s journey. I wouldn’t want to have passed away without writing this book. Perhaps that is what pressured me into writing it. My relationship with my father remains intact, nothing has changed. I wrote him a long letter to say thank you and that was all. He wasn’t able to read it, but if he could then I think that he would have been happy.

Your book reveals a lot about your private life. How did the people you mention in your book react when they read El olvido que seremos?

When I finished the first draft of the book, I took advantage of the fact that I was going on a long trip to China while the rest of the family were spending their Christmas vacation at a holiday home in the country. I left them the manuscript without saying a word about what was inside. I didn’t want to see their faces while they were reading it. To a certain extent, I was worried about their reactions.

Everyone read it, my mother and my four sisters. I was ready to take anything out if they asked me to, or even not to publish the book at all if they didn’t want me to. Without saying it explicitly, they knew that they had the last word. Well, I had every right to write the book, but only they could give me the right to publish it. For them it was very painful to read, like watching a movie about their own lives, filmed by someone else. However, there is also something about pain that relieves, consoles, and cures.

Perhaps that is why they didn’t want me to remove even a single comma. On the contrary, they helped me to finish it and to polish up a few details that had slipped my mind. In reality this book was also written by them, through our many conversations over the years.

Your book transmits the idea of hope through the figure of your father who was a good man. To what extent do you think books can improve people’s lives?

How much life can a book give back to someone who is dead? In reality none, but through the memory of others, a lot. What I feel I have achieved with this book is that people in Columbia, and even in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, and now in Great Britain, know something about the life of this good doctor. I believe that he led an ‘exemplary’ life, and I like to use this word, as in the short novels of Cervantes.

People with ‘exemplary’ lives can function as models, and, in doing so, can improve the lives of others. Now, when it comes to reading books, I wonder whether some books may also have a detrimental effect. There are harmful books, but, since we cannot know for sure what is harmful, we have to allow all books. I believe that the more books that we read, the greater our ability to determine those which are harmful, although having said that, it seems there were Nazis who were also great readers.

In my father, reading produced a positive metamorphosis and I believe that for the majority of people this is also the case, but I am not going to idealise books. They are like knives. They can either be used to peel oranges or they can be used to kill people.

You are now living once again in Columbia and writing about the situation in your country. Has a lot changed since your father’s murder?

The situation is better. From 6500 murders every year in Medellín, now, with a higher population, the figure is down to 650. This is extremely positive as it means almost 6000 fewer tragic stories. As a society we are less grim, less melancholy. Many factors have had an influence and perhaps it is the tragedy and the pain itself which has helped to demonstrate the senselessness of these violent deaths. I think that what has helped most are the actions of the mayors and local authorities. In the last few years we have had a couple of mayors, Fajardo and Salazar, who have spent forty percent of the council’s budget on education. This has been a recipe for success since those on the margins of society no longer feel so marginalized. Now they can see that their lives have a future.

There are many Columbians living in London who, like yourself, had to abandon their country because they felt threatened. How did those years spent in exile affect you?

I was lucky because I was already familiar with Italy. My wife was from there and my children were Italian. It was a relatively pleasant exile. Europe is certainly not hell, far from it. The internal exile of those people displaced from the countryside that end up living in extreme poverty in the Columbian cities is much worse. I can’t complain about my exile, even though there were times when it was hard.

In the reading group we are always looking for authors. Are you able to recommend any Columbian authors or books for future meetings?

Perder es cuestión de método by Santiago Gamboa and Primero estaba el mar by Tomás González